Smart Trainer Compatibility

What Is A Smart Trainer?

In the past few years, more models of smart trainers have come on the market than you can shake a flogging stick at. A smart trainer is one that can do a couple of things:

First, it can share information with another device, like the Sufferfest App. This information can be power, cadence and speed, depending upon what sensors you have installed and the capabilities of your trainer.

Second, it can receive information from a device or app and be controlled by that device or app, changing resistance and power so you can concentrate on suffering without having to shift or manually adjust resistance.

Most smart trainers talk to other devices through one of the following:

ANT+ (typically can only send information to devices, and doesn't allow control of the trainer)

ANT+ FE-C (Fitness Equipment Control: newer version of the ANT+ protocol that allows the trainer to be controlled by external devices or apps)

Bluetooth Smart Trainer Control: There are various methods for controlling trainers via Bluetooth. We support a large number of smart trainers for control via Bluetooth but only on Mac, iOS, and Windows 10.

Note: Your Mac will need to have Bluetooth 4.0 (also known as Bluetooth Smart) in order to use ERG mode via Bluetooth control.

Note: If you are connecting your smart trainer to a Windows computer without the latest version of Windows 10, you will have to use an Ant+/FE-C connection.

Using A Smart Trainer With The Sufferfest

In order for your smart trainer to be compatible with The Sufferfest Training System, it has to use one of the above communication protocols. Some trainer manufacturers use their own, proprietary language, which other platforms simply can't understand.

If your trainer has ANT+ FE-C capabilities (and the FE-C software has been installed), huzzah! Epic suffering is right around the corner. The Sufferfest app can talk to any trainer using the ANT+ FE-C protocol.

The Sufferfest Training System can talk to any smart trainer using the ANT+ protocol (though that might not allow the App to control the resistance of the trainer itself). If you need more information about how to setup ANT+ sensors, sprint over here: Connecting ANT+ Devices.

If your smart trainer is not listed below, fret not, Sufferlandrian! We may still support it, we just might have missed it when compiling this list. Please don't hesitate to email us at theminions@thesufferfest.com

At the bottom of this page is a list of smart trainers we currently don't support. Some of those listed will not be supported until the manufacturer integrates ANT+ FE-C into their firmware. We suspect Couchlandrian saboteurs are causing delays, but don't have proof.

CYCLEOPS SMART TRAINERS

CycleOps is not upgrading their legacy trainers with the FE-C protocol. We will not be supporting legacy trainers anytime soon. The CycleOps ANT+ Communication protocol is specific to the CycleOps Virtual Training Center. Legacy user will have to control trainer resistance using the Cycleops Virtual training App. The only Cycleops trainer that will be supported is the Hammer and Magnus since it has FE-C integrated.

Direto

Drivo

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

Note: You will need to contact Elite for a firmware update in order to have level mode supported on the Drivo with Bluetooth control.

*Kura

Conditionally Supported using ANT+. No bluetooth support yet. *The Kura does not have Smart Trainer control. We only read the power reading directly from the unit. Sufferlandrians still have to shift to hit wattage targets using this trainer.

Rampa

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

Real Turbo Muin B+

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

Max Wattage Diagram attached below. We also call this the "Average Sufferlandrian Power curve".

Qubo Digital B+

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

Real E-Motion B+

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

Arion Smart Digital B+

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

Real Axiom B+

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

Max Wattage Diagram attached below.

Real Tour B+

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

Max Wattage diagram attached below.

JETBLACK SMART TRAINERS

JetBlack Whisper Smart Trainer

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

KURT KINETIC R1

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes

KURT KINETIC CONTROL TRAINERS

T-6500, T-6400, T-6300

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes

KURT KINETIC SMART CONTROL TRAINERS

T-6200, T-6100, T-6000

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Power Only

No Smart Control

No

MINOURA SMART TRAINERS

Kagura LST9200

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

TACX SMART TRAINERS

Any TACX trainer that has FE-C software installed is fully supported at this time. You can use Standard or ERG mode.

TACX Vortex Smart (T2180)

TACX Flow Smart (T2240)

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

Max Brake Power (10 sec.) 800 Watts

Max Sprint Power (1 min.) 700 Watts

*TACX Satori Smart (T2400)

Technically the Satori Smart is not a smart trainer but it will work with the Sufferfest Training System. You change resistance and the trainer will report the correct virtual wattage. We consider it a really "cool" option for trainers.

STACK ZERO HALCYON

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

WAHOO SMART TRAINERS

Wahoo KICKR

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

We fully support the Wahoo KICKR in ERG and Level mode. You can connect the Wahoo KICKR using ANT+ or BLE. Furthermore, you can connect the KICKR using FE-C through the ANT+ channel. You can integrate the Wahoo KICKR with a power meter for cadence or power matching. However, this needs to be done through the Wahoo Fitness App. Some good examples of what power match is at the Stages website here: Stages Power Integration

Wahoo KICKR Core

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

Wahoo KICKR Snap

iOS Bluetooth

Desktop Bluetooth

Desktop ANT+

Yes

Yes

Yes (FE-C)

We full support the Wahoo KICKR Snap in ERG and Level mode. You can connect the KICKR Snap using ANT+ or BLE. You should also be able to connect your power meter meter cadence to the KICKR Snap to relay cadence.

Wahoo KICKR Climb

The KICKR Climb is supported by The Sufferfest but only using certain workouts. More details coming soon!

OTHER TRAINERS

There are a multitude of trainers that have been on the market for many years. We do support some of these trainers at different levels. There are also some indoor cycles that we support like Stages and Wattbike that can be used with the Sufferfest App. If your trainer is not listed here, please email TheMinions@TheSufferfest.com.

There are ways to use these older smart trainers with the Sufferfest App, but most of the solutions require you to be in Level mode and shifting gears to match wattage target goals.

Haven't made the switch to a smart trainer? No excuse for not suffering. You can view our list of compatible standard trainers here: Compatible Standard Trainers.

Trainers That Do Not Have FE-C Installed And Are Not Supported

Cycleops PowerBeam

Cycleops PowerSync

Racermate/Computrainer (all models)

TACX Satori Smart

TACX Bushido (non-smart)

TACX Vortex (non-smart)

TACX Genius (non-smart)

TACX i-Magic, i-Flow, i-Bushido, or i-Vortex are not supported. You can contact TACX and see if they have a way to upgrade these trainers with the ANT+ FE-C protocol.

TACX Flow

TACX Fortius

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Comments

I think a lot of trainer manufacturers are using deceptive marketing with the term "smart" and "Zwift compatible." Yes, your "smart' and 'compatible' trainer will transmit your data to Zwift, but Zwift can only control your machine/trainer IF it has FE-C, which few do.

Perhaps they (ZWIFT) have baked in support outside the FE-C protocol for the Powerbeam Pro (Post 2015 models). The Zwift pages certainly say they DO change the resistance of a late model powerbeam pro. I haven't used Zwift in 6 months plus, as I find the community there can be very whiney, but unless something has changed I can certainly say ZWIFT DOES change resistance on my powerbeam pro, set up using the instructions on the Zwift pages.

I would be very interested in what you have to support the claim that FE-C has to be on a trainer for Zwift to control its resistance. I think that is not accurate in some cases.

Yes, you can control trainers over Bluetooth. However, the developers have to write in the bluetooth code specific to each trainer that doesn't have the FE-C standard. Fitness Equipment Control (FE-C) is great, because it is standardized across the marketplace and any App Developer can easily connect to FE-C trainers. There is no standard bluetooth protocol. So, some trainers are easier than others to support. We will start working on special bluetooth code to support nonFE-C trainers sometime in January. The trainers we support will all come down to customer demand.

Hi, are you *only* going to release BT control for trainers that don't have FE-C? TrainerRoad has just released BT control, from their iOS apps, of Tacx trainers; it actually works very well. TBF, the Tacx protocol is just FE-C smuggled in a BT envelope, so it won't have taken much work, but still it means that a dongle isn't necessary and Taxc is a big name. I don't know why the trainer companies don't just sit down at a table and agree to one protocol, even if the BT people are busy with getting BT5 ready and non-sport stuff. The Taxc way is quite sneaky, but clever in that it means they don't have to do any work in designing a new protocol.

I just received my ant+ dongle to control my Tacx Vortex Smart (which I also haven't had long). I can't find any good documentation about the Sufferefest trainer controls. Erg mode is clear, but I guess it doesn't let you put in any extra effort. For flats, I'm happy using gears just like I would on the road. It could be nice though to have the resistance crank up on the hills.

I just did the Rookie with trainer set at "level 3". There are few places where there are hill climbs targeting about 115% ftp at 70 rpm. I couldn't make those numbers work. I've only got a 50t crank and 12t cog, but it fell far short of creating enough resistance and I couldn't stand up or keep the revs that low.

I don't think I noticed any resistance increase on the hills though. Is there supposed to be? What do the levels mean? Is it just a higher overall resistance setting or is it like zwift and is supposed to set the amount of resistance variation on hills? Of course the Vortex Smart is only rated to simulate 7% hills, so I expect I'll have to use gears some to simulate the rest but I would have thought (or hoped) a 7% hill simulation and my top gear would be able to get me there and a a lot more.

I don't have the neo, just the lowly vortex. I guess the neo is capable of much more resistance and it sounds it's using too much. Assuming it's anything at all like the Vortex, and I'm using ant+ and windows), at the connection screen you can select the device and then there's probably a "mode" selection box. The Vortex has "erg" and levels 1 through 9. Erg means you don't have to shift, but you are locked into exactly how much power it wants you to produce, slow and hard or fast and easy. Personally I prefer to shift as I would in real life and have a little freedom to push harder (or even easier) for a bit. For that you want the levels. I try to choose a level that puts me in my lowest gear on the big ring during the recovery efforts. That leaves you all your other gears to work with for harder efforts. I've found that this does NOT do any active control of resistance at all though, even on hills, so even hills require just shifting to a harder gear to get the cadence down lower. I feel the power curves are maybe little wrong this way, but it's ok. You either give the software full control or none. I prefer none, but hill simulation would certainly be nice.

When I was using bluetooth with an ipad, I could connect from ant+ with my smartphone at the same time and use the utility app to set a hill incline (including possibly negative). This seemed to achieve about the same thing as the levels.

I was bummed when I read the "Trainers that do not have FE-C installed and are not supported." list above, as I own a Kurt Kinetic Rock & Roll Smart Control and was going to be really mad if this expensive machine did not work with Sufferfest. Well, guess what, it does work. I contacted Kurt Kinetic customer support to get the straight scoop and ask if they were making any changes to make their Smart Control system compatible with Sufferfest. The following is the response:

"The issue is not related to FE-C, but rather that Sufferfest doesn't support our hardware in their app. You can subscribe to the Sufferfest series through our app, which gets you the same cycling content and trainer control. In addition to our Kinetic Fit app, we're also compatible with Zwift and Trainerroad, with more on the way. The Sufferfest content in our app is separate subscription fee from our Smart sub." the fee is $10 per month.

Hope this saves others from going through the same stress and process that I did.

I was quite frustrated with Sufferfest/Elite Rampa integration, but the helpful support folks at Sufferfest helped me out. The problem was that in ERG mode, power was not changing quickly, or sometimes at all, to the target. So I'd hit a short interval and be spinning my brains out at low power rather than grinding at high wattage.

Turns out that having the ANT+ USB stick plugged into the back of my iMac was the problem. I plugged it into the keyboard USB port instead, and now the power changes right when it should.

So if you're having problems be sure to try using a USB extension or some other way of moving the ANT stick away from your computer.

Zwift and Trainer Road control the resistance on my Cycleops PowerBeam Pro via ANT. Disappointed Sufferfest doesn't work with my it, particularly now many videos only seem to be available through the SF app.

I’ve used Sufferfest both with my normal powermeter and with the trainer power controlling the resistance using FEC. Although the difference wasn’t huge it was still annoying so I just do it manually.

I have previously used ‘power match’ on a different software; what I’ve found is two things;
1) my cadence goes up over time, so I become rubbish at grinding up steep hills. I just can’t put out the power at low cadences.
2) I become rubbish at targeting powers by feel. My power meter lags behind by about 2s, but I’m pretty good now at targeting a wattage; shame the Sufferfest power smoothing can’t be turned off or I’d be even better.

I don’t think I will ever go back to doing just power match. When, and I do hope Sufferfest introduce it, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to just using powermatch. I would use it for base and long rides, but for sprints and anaerobic efforts I think it is worse.

My Bushido was reading 12w higher at FTP. Annoyingly the difference isn’t constant throughout the range, which is one of the reasons powermatch isn’t great for short intervals.

I have however done exactly what you want though. Just give the trainer F-EC to Sufferfest and ride with your normal bike computer on. Look at them both simultaneously. You will be able to adjust manually your FTP in the Sufferfest App. You just (for now) need to remember two sets of numbers.

At the moment, I have to use Sufferfest with my 4iiii Precision (Ant+) as power meter and annoyingly control my Vortex Smart with the Tacx-Androidapp (Bluetooth) manually, to get satisfying results, because there is a huge (and variable) difference between the power of both devices. It would be much easier, if Sufferfest could use the power-values from a (real) powermeter to control the resistance of a smart trainer.

Hello Everyone, I just want to jump in with an update for PowerMatch. We won't start building that capability until the Fall of 2018. There is a lot we still want to do with the App and those things beat out power match at this time.